Squawk 3000

Sitting on the sofa last night with my old laptop and trying to fly a Cessna 172 using FlightGear - which seems to be a great sim program - but my laptop isn’t up to the task. Its a few years old, was a hand-me-down, and even with all other apps closed it struggles. Frequent long pauses while scenery refreshes makes it kinda difficult to fly straight and level, and key/mouse inputs while frozen produce some fairly dramatic (and disastrous) results.



So… time to buy a new ‘puter - the software really needs a 2GHz machine with a fast graphics card to do it justice. But that’s the nature of the world today, isn’t it. Gee, I remember back in the late 80’s when the first version of Microsoft Flight Simulator was on a single 360kb floppy drive, and ran quite happily on a 128MHz IBM AT. Mind you, the scenery was pretty darn basic, and there weren’t many aircraft to choose from. You flew what they gave you, and that was that. Even so, it did help me to learn all about navigation using ADF, DME, VOR, and did keep me happily occupied for many sleepless nights.

Still can’t beat the real thing though. It’s always been easier to control a real aircraft.

I’ve started this blog to reflect on my decision to renew my private pilot’s licence, which lapsed around 18 years ago. I am (was) endorsed on both Piper PA-28 and PA-32-CS aircraft, but my renewal will most likely be in Cessna 172’s or 182’s. Either way, I will be happy to start flying again.

Stay tuned if you are interested in following this journey. I’ll also recount some experiences using flight simulator software (FlightGear primarily - because it is Open Source [and therefore free :)], and because it provides me with scenery files for Tasmania and South east Australia - particularly Launceston) which will make it much easier for me to brush up on my navigation and instrument flying without the risk of hitting a mountain. (Joking of course).

This is the PA-28 I got my unrestricted pilot’s licence in, in 1987 - VH-JAZ - which used to have a blue and white colour scheme, but got repainted somewhere along the line. (This photo is copyright of Andrei Bezmylov, and can be viewed at Airliners.net) . It was brand new when I was training, and I was one of the first to fly it on arrival at Pacific Aviation at Parafield, South Australia.

I’m looking forward to taking to the skies again - Tasmania is a great place to fly (most of the time) with heaps of terrific scenery. I’ll post pics of various places from time to time.

Talk soon